TS3 Authoritarian rule (from 1750 CE onwards)

Authoritarian rule is a thematic study of governments that concentrate power in one leader, a party, an army or a colonial administration, cannot be removed through free elections and limit opposition and civil liberties. It covers regimes from 1750 to the present: absolute and imperial rulers, dictatorships, one-party states, military regimes and colonial governments, and the extreme form known as totalitarianism, which sought to control private life as well as politics. The study compares regimes from different regions to explain how they rose, survived and fell.

Four guiding questions

The study is organised around four guiding questions, each with its own page. The diagram of the guiding questions shows how they follow the life of a regime.

The questions are linked. The conditions in which a regime emerged, such as war, revolution or economic crisis, shaped the methods it used to keep power; its economic and social policies decided who gained and who suffered; and those policies in turn produced many of the challenges it faced.

The core regimes

There is no fixed list of regimes; any well-evidenced authoritarian state after 1750 can be studied, from Napoleon's France to military governments of the late twentieth century. The pages follow six core regimes from four regions throughout, with shorter examples from many others. The table of the core regimes lists them.

Each guiding question develops one regime in more depth: Hitler's rise to power for why authoritarian rule emerged, Stalin's USSR for how it was maintained, life in Mao's China for its effects on people, and the challenges to Perón and his overthrow in 1955 for how it was challenged.

Big ideas that run through the thematic study

Conditions made authoritarian rule possible, but leaders, organisations and the choices of existing elites decided whether and when it came. War, defeat and colonial humiliation were the most common preconditions; economic crisis, above all the Great Depression, destroyed confidence in existing governments; and ideas such as nationalism, communism and fascism offered explanations and solutions. Historians disagree about the weight of structures and individuals, for example whether Hitler was carried to power by the crisis or let in by a small circle of conservatives.

No regime relied on one method alone. Legal methods gave dictatorship a legal cover; force, from secret police to camps, was used on very different scales; propaganda built a cult of personality and named enemies; and many regimes enjoyed real popular support, won through jobs, land, welfare and national pride. Historians of the "totalitarian" school stressed terror and control from above; social historians since the 1980s have stressed consent, accommodation and participation from below.

The effects of authoritarian rule depended on who a person was. The same regime could bring education, work and social mobility to some groups and famine, deportation or death to others, and policies often had results very different from their aims. The experiences of women and of marginalised groups are lines of inquiry in their own right. Challenges came from inside the elite, from below, from the regime's own policies and from abroad, and only rarely brought a regime down: of the six core regimes, Perón's was overthrown by his own army in 1955 and Hitler's was destroyed by foreign armies, while the other four lasted until the death of their leader or beyond.

How the thematic study is studied and examined

All students, at SL and HL, take one of four thematic studies: Conflict, Innovation and transformation (both from 750 CE), Authoritarian rule and Popular movements (both from 1750). The thematic study takes about 80 teaching hours. Teachers choose the examples, which may include recent ones, and students need examples from at least two of the four regions (Africa and the Middle East; the Americas; Asia and Oceania; Europe). The study builds skill in making connections and comparisons between different examples.

The thematic study is assessed by Paper 2 (1 hour 45 minutes, 25 marks; 40 per cent of the SL grade and 25 per cent of the HL grade), the same paper at SL and HL. Section A sets two questions on the historical concepts, of which students answer one (6 marks) using one example from their thematic study. Section B sets two questions on each thematic study; students choose one and answer both parts. Part A asks students to explain how or why something happened, using one regime (4 marks). Part B is an essay that begins "To what extent …?" and asks for examples from at least two different authoritarian states in at least two regions (15 marks).